


What Starfleet has on him

by Loopdeloup



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: A sucker for doomed causes, Damn it Chakotay!, F/M, Starfleet, Terrible beauty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loopdeloup/pseuds/Loopdeloup
Summary: He thought he was as done with Starfleet as it was possible to be.The irony of being captured again by Starfleet, drawn back into Starfleet, doesn't escape him. The ongoing cosmic joke at his expense is compounded by finding that despite everything, Starfleet still has some things on him he is unable to resist.Not least among these: her hands.
Relationships: Chakotay & Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	1. Her Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He thought he was as done with Starfleet as it was possible to be.
> 
> The irony of being captured again by Starfleet, drawn back into Starfleet, doesn't escape him. The ongoing cosmic joke at his expense is compounded by finding that despite everything, Starfleet still has some things on him he is unable to resist.
> 
> Not least among these: her hands.

There was a time, in the deep distant past, Starfleet had him, wholesale.

He was never one for half-measures.

Starfleet had captured his heart and his imagination, his full eager youthful enthusiasm. His passion. His present and—he thought—his future.

He had believed in it enough to turn his back on his people and his family.

His disappointment when Starfleet failed to live up to its own high-vaulted ideals had been too much to forgive. It was prepared to negotiate and cut deals with evil, leaving innocent people unprotected, like lambs to the slaughter. He told himself that the fact that his very own people were those affected did not matter, it was the principal of it. The death blow would have been the same regardless of who was so callously abandoned by Starfleet to their fate.

And yet he remembered how his people, so simple and down to earth, had mocked what they called his naïve enthusiasm for Starfleet, and he felt ashamed.

When he'd taken his arguments as far as they would let him only be offered bland excuses in return, he'd resigned his commission, burning his bridges by tossing down his pips in a rage at the feet of the cold-eyed admiral presiding over the Starfleet Ethics Review Board. 

The bridge burning soon moved beyond the figurative to the sometimes literal with his joining the Maquis resistance. 

He thought he was as done with Starfleet as it was possible to be.

The irony of being captured again by Starfleet, drawn back into Starfleet, doesn't escape him. The ongoing cosmic joke at his expense is compounded by finding that despite everything, Starfleet still has some things on him he is unable to resist.

Not least among these: her hands.

*

Her hands.

From the first moment she had pushed in between him and all those blustery Starfleet phasers waving at him, a battle brewing, bloodshed a heartbeat away, her delicate left hand had curled behind her and her fingers had spread to hold all that mass of self-righteous Starfleet back.

At the same time, she pressed two fingers of her right hand to the center of his chest, and held them there in stillness. She looked up into his adrenaline-flushed face with a twinkle of amusement in her eye and a half-smile on her lips and held him in stillness too.

All the quadrant on fire, in dissent and battle and confusion and conflict, heavy losses on all sides, enemies and circumstances unknown abounding, spiraling out of control.

And she could tame it all with a gesture of those elegant hands.

*

Her hands.

Months later and he is still under their command.

He knew about the strategy. Starfleet command training. Humanoid Body Language 101.

A resource especially important for those diminished in stature or dealing with larger races; for the not naturally charismatic; for women.

Draw attention to your hands. Use them to help you take up more space. Fling them about, wave them in the air, gesture widely, place them on your hips to make yourself look bigger and more commanding.

That was fairly obvious. But less so: use them to emphasize the points you’re making. Use your hands—always with careful diplomacy and professional cultural correctness—to say what your voice cannot or should not, or as a shortcut, to show your approval, thanks, relief, encouragement, affection. Use your hands to get people to follow them with their gaze, and subconsciously they will be eased into following your lead. Get people to look at your hands before you even speak, get them to be unconsciously waiting for you, waiting _on_ you. 

Maybe knowing about it makes it even more mesmerizing to him.

He’s never seen it so consistently used before. A strategy she never fails to draw on, and mostly she does so masterfully.

But what is even more fascinating to him are the times when his trained eye picks it up as somewhat deliberate, self-consciously done, not entirely natural. When she flashes her hands about, when she places them against the black of the uniform at her hips, her thin white fingers spread to emphasize their elegant curl, when she throws them up in the air in enthusiasm or anger or impatience, or to preface her remarks thinking through a complex solution to the current crisis gripping them, to draw out one person’s contribution, or to cut dead that of another, to indicate the time for discussion is over, to count off steps in a plan to be followed.

It is visceral, physical, and even if you do know intellectually that it is often a deliberately deployed device, it has its effect, calls attention to her, enhances her stature, her presence, emphasizes she is the most important person in the room, not someone to be overlooked or side-stepped or talked over. Like the conductor of the symphony orchestra, she is someone to look up to, someone to take your cues from, someone from whom to seek approval. Someone it is hard to drag your gaze away from. Someone you could watch all day.

For like the rest of her, her hands are beautiful.

Even so, he tells himself, what he admires most about it is the cerebral part. She is a master at playing to her strengths, using all her resources to charm, to increase her command presence, her charisma. She is so diligent, so careful to include every single factor, however small, that could help her win. Win an argument, win at pool, win favorable trade terms, win a battle, win an ally, win the hearts and minds of those that follow her.

Listening to her speak, watching her hands carefully flutter, cut the air, pierce and chop, invite and promise, calling on others to fall behind her, to listen, to act, to give their best, to go beyond, to hope, to _believe_ ; more than once he has to still an almost irresistible urge to capture one of her hands, hold it in his own. Press it to his lips, hold it against his chest, where she herself sometimes places it, as if she feels the need to ensure the loyalty of the heart beating there.

_That’s okay, Captain. You already have me in your power; you can relax with the hands._


	2. What Starfleet Has on Him: Its Terrible Beauty

Its Terrible Beauty.

As a star-struck young man he’d been a sucker for it.

OK, Quite a Lot Is Not Terrible, Just Beautiful

He felt a little ashamed to admit it but having come from a bare-bones, back-to-basics native colony, from the very first, from when he’d been an angry young teen forced to follow his father in a trek squelching through the heat and mud of a tropical rainforest, even the practical day-to-day of Starfleet struck him as profoundly beautiful.

The physical grace with which Starfleet arranged all its operations was deeply satisfying to him.

The clean, powerful state-of-the-art technology. Gracious comfortable facilities and vessels and ships and living spaces for all Starfleet collaborators, with an emphasis on functionality while never skimping on the importance of art, culture, entertainment, and leisure activities.

All of them living in plenty, wanting for nothing, generous in sharing their knowledge and resources amongst themselves and with others. Generous work to leisure ratios. The ongoing encouragement to better oneself, the skilled mentoring in achieving one’s potential, clever insightful counsellors guiding and assisting each cadet, each crewman, each officer, each individual right up the chain of command, in finding their rightful place in which they can achieve contribute their full potential.

The streamlined command structure peopled by experts at the top of their field boasting extraordinary, specialized skillsets for each post. He found from his first encounters in the Academy, Starfleet promised the provision of superiors who were intelligent, intuitive, genuinely inspiring admiration, worthy of being looked up to. He had aspired with all his intellect and passion to become worthy of their esteem, meet the expectations held out.

It was an organization which sought to ensure that its people at every level of command were overseen by insightful leaders who knew how to foster the comprehensive growth of those under their charge, extracting the best from each in a way that was genuinely fulfilling, so allowing hugely diverse individuals with their varied skills and talents and different brands of genius to come together and work in harmony and achieve great things, overcoming all types of challenges with efficiency and economy, safeguarding the well-being, peace and prosperity of all.

Hell, he even liked the sleek, comfortable uniforms, designed to show how each was part of a whole, how each one fit in. 

*

From before he’d even joined Starfleet, all these things appealed to him. Later, having had his years roughing it in laughable ships patched together out of parts largely salvaged or stolen, held together as often as not with luck and a prayer as much as the hard work and ingenuity of their crews, having to work shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of ragtag comrades – many brave and brilliant and committed and admirable, but a significant contingent of whom were dubious in the extreme in both motives and abilities – and a command structure often decided upon by who threw the biggest punch, he wasn´t ashamed to admit the appeal of falling back into the comfortable ordered luxury of Starfleet was something of a relief.

The Part Where the Beauty Becomes Terrible

But much more important to him, much more precious and also vulnerable and a little bit terrifying was the high-end, high-brow, all-or-nothing beauty Starfleet promised those that believed in it.

Starfleet as golden and glistening and shining and true. The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the one. From each according to ability, to each according to need. Service and Sacrifice and Compassion and _Love_. Ethics and the pursuit of knowledge for the greater good as the ultimate end goals, to be obtained by actively seeking out discovery and wonder and scientific exploration, understanding wherever possible, and intrigue and awe and further inquiry wherever this proved elusive.

This idealized Starfleet, so powerful, so strong, that appealed to him so deeply all but killed him when it had turned out to be largely a beautiful mirage. True for some, but not for all. Only as true and real as your immediate superior, your immediate chain of command. And once a corrupt element crept in anywhere along the way, all that beauty became corrupt, became a thing of terror, of cruelty and deceit.

Even so, this ideal Starfleet, this thing of terrible beauty, still packed a punch. Still remained a real palpable force, the pride behind every uniform, an ideal sought and sometimes even lived and made real by these true believer types. He knew it was not the case everywhere by a long shot, but almost as soon as he came aboard _Voyager_ he learned this was indeed the brand of Starfleet practiced here, and Captain Kathryn Janeway was the reason why.

Thanks to her, he had this chance to witness it, Starfleet at its best, Starfleet when it embodied its truest ideals. It was like being part of a symphony orchestra, all these people working together, each putting in their individual part to produce something sublime, the whole so much greater than the sum of the parts. This Starfleet he found deeply moving, noble beyond estimation, and considered it an honor and deeply satisfying to serve in such a cause and under such a captaincy.

Captain Janeway. The truest adept and embodiment of the terrible beauty of Starfleet. 

Sometimes he didn't know whether to be grateful or horrified at the level of her bravery, her self-sacrifice, her vulnerability before the power of her belief in Starfleet, terrible and beautiful in committing everything to its ideals and asking for, accepting nothing in return.

His own experience of Starfleet not living up to its promise, the nearest he could come was to make a commitment to _his Captain_ , so beautiful, so terrible, to whom he swore to give everything. And to ask for nothing in return. 

*

_As a star-struck young man, he’d been a sucker for Starfleet's terrible beauty._

_Truth be told, he still was today._


End file.
